Chris Floyd: Out-Foxing Fox: Times Totes Water for War Crime Spin

[babylonsister]

Out-Foxing Fox: Times Totes Water for War Crime Spin
Chris Floyd
Wednesday, 21 May 2008


We have often noted here the special role that New York Times reporter Michael Gordon plays in the national media. For years, he has served as a key conduit for government propaganda aimed at fomenting military aggression, then justifying it once it has begun. In many ways, he has probably been a far more effective tool of the militarists than the Fox News network.

The latter, of course, pumps the toxic, bloodstained sewage of Bush Regime spin directly into the public discourse 24 hours a day. But Fox is a very crude instrument. The network makes almost no attempt to hide its direct relationship with the warmongers, as demonstrated by its recent hiring of "news analyst" Karl Rove – who, though supposedly retired from politics, is of course still a principal adviser of both the White House and the McCain campaign. Fox preaches largely to the converted, and although it plays a vital role in keeping the faithful roused to fury, its partisan extremism tempers its credibility with the great and the good, the "serious" Establishment players.

The New York Times, on the other hand, is widely regarded as the nation's leading newspaper: somber, serious, independent. It is also seen as a bastion of "liberal" journalism, forever skeptical of government – especially a government run by Republicans. Thus a dollop of militarist propaganda in its pages has a much broader and deeper impact than whole truckloads of bile on Fox. "Wow, the New York Times says Saddam has WMD – and they hate Bush, so it can't be White House spin!" "Look at this: the New York Times says Iran is killing Americans in Iraq – and those liberals wouldn't publish anything that agreed with Bush unless it was really true." And because innumerable media venues throughout the country take their lead from the Times, a well-planted piece of "credible" spin appearing there immediately becomes "conventional wisdom" on the subject.

Not every reporter at the Times serves this function, of course. There is good journalism to be found in the paper; we draw on it here all the time. But Michael Gordon's work is a special case. His by-line on a story (with or without his former warmongering collaborator, Judith Miller) virtually guarantees that militarist propaganda is being "stovepiped" directly from the White House and Pentagon. These days he alternates between pounding the drum for an attack on Iran and prettying up the ghastly, on-going war crime in Iraq. His latest piece of psy-ops involves operations in Baghdad's Sadr City, where a looming massacre has been averted (or postponed) due to a deal brokered by -- not General David Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker or President George Bush – but by Iran.

more...

http://www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1516/135/

[T Monk]

1. the gray lady is a prostitute